Tire Maintenance

July 6, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Author: liumingliang

Article:

Tire maintenance for motor vehicles is necessitated by
several factors. The chief cause of tire failure is friction
from moving contact with road surfaces, causing the tread on the
outer perimeter of tires to eventually wear away. When the tire
tread becomes too shallow, the tire is worn out and should be
replaced. The same wheels can usually be used throughout the
lifetime of the car. Other problems encountered in tire
maintenance include:

Uneven or accelerated tire wear: can be caused by
under-inflation, overload or bad wheel alignment.

Increased wear on a tire facing the outside or the inside of a
car: often a sign of bad wheel alignment.

Tread worn away completely: especially when the wear on the
outer rubber exposes the reinforcing threads within, the tire is
said to be bald and should be replaced as soon as possible.
Sometimes tires with worn tread are recapped, i. e. a new layer
of rubber with grooves is bonded onto the outer perimeter of a
worn tire. Since this bonding may occasionally come loose, new
tires are considered superior to recapped ones.

This tire has been punctured by a screw.

Sometimes a pneumatic tire gets a hole or a leak through which
the air inside leaks out resulting in a flat tire, a condition
which must be fixed before the car can be driven safely. See
Flat tire for more information.

Spare tires
Vehicles typically carry a spare tire, already mounted on a rim,
to be used in the event of flat tire or blowout. Many spare
tires (sometimes called “doughnuts”) for modern cars are smaller
than normal tires (to save on trunk space, gas mileage, weight
and cost) and should not be driven very far before replacement
with a full-size tire. A few modern vehicle models may use
conventional spare tires. Jacks and for emergency replacement of
a flat tire with a spare tire are included with a new car. Not
included, but sometimes available separately, are hand or foot
pumps for filling a tire with air by the vehicle owner. Cans of
pressurized air can sometimes be bought separately for
convenient emergency refill of a tire.

Some modern cars and trucks are equipped with run flat tires
that may be driven with a puncture over a distance of 80 km to
100 km. This eliminates the need for an immediate stop, and the
associated expensive tow service or tire change.

Rotation
Front tires, especially on front wheel drive vehicles, have a
tendency to wear out more quickly than rear tires. Routine
maintenance including tire rotation (exchanging the front and
rear tires with each other) is often done periodically to
facilitate uniform tire wear. There are simple hand-held
tire-pressure gauges which can be temporarily attached to the
valve stem to check a tire’s interior air pressure. This
measurement of tire inflation pressure should be made at least
once a month. The proper inflation pressure is located in the
owner’s manual and on the Tire Placard. Because of slow leaks or
changes in weather or other conditions tire pressure may
occasionally have to be corrected, usually via the valve stem
with compressed air which is often available at service stations.

Under-inflation of tires can also cause premature tire wear.
Many modern vehicles have tire pressure monitoring systems;
older cars typically equipped with indirect monitoring systems
while later cars are typically equipped with direct tire
pressure monitoring systems.

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Tire Maintenance

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